Benching Henne? Hahahahaha! Not Sparano

Once upon a time when the Dolphins re-signed Chad Pennington despite the fact they were going with Chad Henne as their starter, we discussed the possibility Pennington's presence would be a shadow over Henne. The Dolphins, being nearly as smart as us, discussed it also.

And at the end of that discussion, the Dolphins believed Pennington's presence to be an asset.

So now that Henne has not morphed into Dan Marino -- although he's still getting better -- some of you want Pennington back in, which is kind of ridiculous if you ask me. But hey, you get to have an opinion, too.

Unfortunately for you, Tony Sparano doesn't care what your opinion is. Today he discussed the topic of benching Henne, having Pennington around as a lurking shadow, what the factors were weighed in the decision to sign Pennington.

“Well Chad (Pennington), and you know one of the things is he’s the thousand pound elephant that’s in the room sometimes, so, we knew that obviously that’s one of the things that you consider when you bring a player like (Pennington) back. But it’s the other things that outweigh those kinds of situations. I mean I honestly, and this is no disrespect towards any fans out there, but I could [not] care less what they think about the quarterback situation.

"From that standpoint the positives like Chad Pennington the rapper out there today (laughing) alright. Those things outweigh -- that’s right it was awesome -- you know and I mean that’s a smart player knowing at this time after 13 days, okay, and living with the taste that you’ve had in your mouth that my teammates need a little something here, okay. I mean here it comes out of the blue so that’s the last guy you felt like might be doing something like that so it was really ... I mean those are the things that outweigh any of that other stuff, in other words, when you’re sitting there and you’re thinking, well you know if it doesn’t go your way everybody’s going to start screaming about Chad Pennington and any of those kind of things so it’s not worth doing.

"I don’t want to be in those kinds of situations I mean I just wanted to have the best players I could have around me at that point and that’s why we did what we did and it’s been a tremendous help to Chad Henne."

Sparano has Pennington in his back pocket anytime Henne gets hurt or the game is out of hand or Henne needs to sit. But sitting Henne? During a game? This season?

Nope. Thought hasn't come up.

"No, I mean I haven’t really…I can honestly truthfully tell you that those things haven’t gone through my head because every time that something like that happens there’s three other things that I could look at to say, 'Man look at that young guy do this.' And I mean, I can bat that back and forth with any of the Monday morning quarterbacks that are out there. Again, I just…you look at a what the kid has done right now and you put his numbers up against some of the other people in the league -- some one of you guys did it recently here, okay, I’ve seen it here in print. But, I think those are the things the guy does or he’s getting a lot better that way. And having Chad Pennington around him helps him a lot."